Synaesthete
by Hypokritika
Summary: AU, post Day of the Dead. Things had gone differently when Marquez captured El Mariachi, and Sands got a different sort of treatment under Barillo. They cross paths after the dust settles. Could be preslash if one squints and looks sideways.
1. Chapter 1

A/n: I wrote these first three chapters back in early '04 and then added the other chapters in increments over the next two years. I'm proud to say that this particular fic is finally finished. Yes, I'm a very slow writer. I see this as a continuing learning process, and I'm afraid none of this has been beta-read. It doesn't feel right to poke my beta after such a long absence, so any constructive criticism here would be greatly appreciated. And now I will stop rambling, oh yes I will:3

**Synaesthete**

Of all the things to happen, he never quite expected this. His thumb lingers on the guitar's sixth string, his other fingers laced between the first, second and third in a careless, staccato would-be chord that never quite comes. His left hand is beginning to cramp, but he can't bring himself to start the song. It sounds wrong, in his head.

He would like to feel the familiar respite of closed eyes and the impression of sleep, but he doesn't have eyelids to lower over the hollows where eyes should have been.

He sees music now. Frameless notes in blues and reds and yellows that melt into each other, and geometric shapes where consonants and percussion reach his ears. It's all he can see, even though he doesn't have eyes to see them with. Not anymore, anyway.

He keeps his head lowered. His Death's Head gaze unsettles the _cantina_'s customers. Waiting for his fingers to pluck the swelling melody from the guitar's strings, he feels an inexplicable tension building in the hollow between his throat and his sternum. He grits his teeth, but the song refuses to come. He doesn't want to force it. He has tried before, and it came out wrong. Unable to see frets and the subtlest quiver of strings, he has lost the ability to _make_ music. Now the music must make _him_. He doesn't necessarily need the visual reference; he knows each note intimately, each press of finger against guitar neck, the placement of every minute variation in pitch and tone. But he has always equated seeing with control, and now, in the darkness of formless color and senseless shape, the songs must grab him and swallow him whole before he can release them into the air.

So now the mariachi waits, and around him, the world rushes past in a blur of color and shape.


	2. Chapter 2

He squints into the sky and shifts his gaze to the sign hanging lopsidedly on the _cantina_'s entrance. Not that he actually cares about what this particular dive is called; it looks cheap, and his dwindling funds aren't exactly equipped to accommodate anything more than "cheap."

Fuck America and all her blind, ungrateful shitpuppies anyway. Six years of service, not including time wasted on training, meant jack shit if you got caught. Uncle Sammy didn't even have the good grace to give Sands decent remuneration for all his grief, the cocksucking, capitalist shit-bitch. Get a needle stuck in your ears, and you lose your job. All he got was a shitty little house in a God-Doesn't-Give-A-Fuck town in Mexico, a pittance for a pension, a pat on the back, and the none-too-subtle suggestion that if he ever thought about stepping on American soil again, he'd have his balls blown off faster than he could say "Saskatchewan."

He slips into the darkened doorway, careful to evade the unidentifiable puddles on the dusty floor. He takes a seat in a far corner with his back to the wall, where he could see the entire cantina without being seen, and lifts an arm to hail the hard-faced waitress.

"What do you want?" Sands reads the Spanish words shaped by her obscenely red lips.

"Cheapest shit on the menu," he replies in English, wondering if he's modulated his voice a bit _too_ much. He really couldn't tell.

"What?"

"Whatever's the cheapest," he repeats, louder. Or at least, what feels louder.

She shrugs and turns around. "You didn't have to yell, you gringo fuck," she mutters under her breath.

Sands doesn't catch the words her mouth forms, but he flips her off anyway. Then he leans back and soaks in the sounds drifting languidly through his imagination, and he curses the eternal silence.

In the opposite side of the room, a mariachi surrenders to the liquid brightness pouring from the strings of his guitar.


	3. Chapter 3

He feels a routine beginning to form. Every day, for the past week, he has returned to that particular cantina for his meals. The food, dubious-looking as it is, is at least consistently edible, which is a lot more than what he can say about many of the other places he's been to.

And it has its very own mariachi. A genuine, guitar-toting, fugly jacket-wearing mariachi, not the kind that carries around guns and vendettas. Not that music is exactly a luxury he can indulge in anymore, but the idea that the place has a live musician playing music for his enjoyment, regardless of how much he _couldn't_ hear, is appealing. A nice, ego-stroking kind of feeling.

Your very own guitarman on a string.

The mariachi himself, on the other hand, is another matter entirely. He sits in the darkened corner of the room with his guitar. He always keeps his head down. His hair, black like windows at midnight, falls past his shoulders and obscures his face. Sands has never seen his face, but something about him sets Sands on edge. Like he's supposed to be remembering something unpleasant, but can never really figure out what it is.

He doesn't particularly like the feeling very much.

His gaze flickers to the clumsy sign hanging above the cantina's entrance and then hovers preemptively over the looming red-brown-black of the gaping threshold. He'd use the term, "like the maw of a waiting serpent," but it's cliché, and he's so fucking sick of clichés. He's become one himself: the villain falling into the pit of his own folly. Familiarity breeds contempt. Ha ha ha.

In the street, the light is like trumpets, loud even after midday has passed. It's always much dimmer inside. He doesn't keep count of how many times he has read the sign, but he has been to the place enough times to actually bother remembering its name now.

_El Infierno Azul_, the place is called. Bold and solid and black behind a tan sheen of grime.

The Blue Hell.

How very fricking apt.

It really is blue. Especially during the afternoons, when the sun slants just _so_, and it's still too bright outside to bother wasting electricity on. It's a dusty, orange sort of blue that barely scrapes against the shadows and the yellow, grease-stained tablecloths. A blue that hangs in the air like a question. Or a raised middle finger.

Sands throws the mariachi a glare as he slips in. He sits across the room from him, as far as possible, in the same table he had sat in all week. The lone waitress flashes him a dirty look as she gathers the dishes from another table.

In his head, he calls her Pookie.

He is amused by his own sardonic wit.

As of the moment, there is only one other customer. A man snores loudly from the bar. Sands doesn't hear it, but he sees how the bartender pointedly ignores the_ cerveza_ from the overturned glass in the man's limp hand, dripping to the floor and pooling on the scuffed wood. It's barely two in the afternoon. Sands sees the bastard there every day. He is always unconscious, or well on his way to it.

Sands is suspicious, but he has decided that relegating a narcoleptic drunkard to the "harmless" category couldn't do much harm. It's not like anyone out there is calling for his cock on a plate anymore. He has heard (and he uses the term very loosely) tell of the Barillo cartel's fate: totaled on the Day of the Dead. The exact same day of Sands's failed coup. Now isn't that a nifty coincidence.

He hopes that Ajedrez, that traitorous cuntfuck, died slowly. The last thing he had ever heard was a terrible, high pitched whine. And no, he doesn't want to think about it. _You listened too closely, you see. Ended up hearing things you weren't supposed to hear. In this corner of Perdition, that isn't very safe. Don't worry. We can remedy that._

It's the fact that he had let it happen that gets to him, really. He absolutely _hates_ that it had been possible. _Hates_ that he had been knocked out and tied up and left in a back room, away from the action, for his darling darling co-workers to find, two days later. _Hates_ that he still hasn't quite found his feet yet, even though, for all intents and purposes, everything is over, and he is still perfectly capable of delivering a universe of smackdown. Perfectly.

_Hush now. Quiet. This may sting a bit._

Rumor has it that three men single-handedly massacred not only the entire Barillo cartel, but Marquez's army, as well. Then again, rumor also has it that one of those men wept tears of blood. Some even went so far as to say that the crying man was El Mariachi himself, weeping for the lives lost and destroyed by the injustice wrought by Marquez and Barillo's unholy alliance. Fucking stories. Last Sands has heard, (again, he uses the term loosely) that ridiculous lump of angst had dropped off the face of the earth.

When he looks up to hail the waitress, he sees the mariachi in the corner begin to tune his guitar. Sands wonders why the mariachi bothers.


	4. Chapter 4

To El Mariachi, time is the color of old corpses. But only when he pays attention. Otherwise, it fades into the black like everything else. It has been months –he isn't sure of the exact number- since his unfortunate encounter on the Day of the Dead. Sometimes, during the fleeting bursts of sobriety he stumbles across, Fideo whispers the date under his breath. Again and again, like a mantra, he would enumerate how many days since, weeks since, hours since… And always, for days after, there would be no speaking to him, lost as he would be in the blue-gray of memory and grief.

Lorenzo had died.

Lorenzo is still dead.

He and Fideo had seen far too much of the world together, for all of Lorenzo being barely more than twenty-three. They had something El Mariachi could not penetrate. They had an understanding.

But Lorenzo is still dead.

Sometimes though, he hears Fideo mutter to himself, and El Mariachi could smell Lorenzo's cheap, forty peso cologne.

What he can remember of how it all happened is noise and blood and running and pain and hands and rage and, instead of darkness, Carolina's red red blood spreading slowly in the dust. Everything had been amplified a thousand fold, and he was shooting and shooting and hearing it all screaming clashing bright smelling like blood. He thought it had been the drugs, the drugs that made him too weak and disoriented and stupid to fight back when. To struggle properly when. Before. And then: everything blood. And hands and running and metal hot nostoppingcan'tstop-! Momentum like promises. And then Lorenzo screamed and El _saw_ the green of him dissipate. Knew. And Fideo's hand closed around his and they were running and shooting and shooting and killing and running and killing and he knew that Fideo was lost. Fighting, but lost. And there was Marquez. And bang. And red. Everywhere red and yellow and rage melting away.

_Dead men tell no tales._

He distinctly remembers the angular, electric blue of Marquez's gun crashing to the floor. The soft, gray thud of Marquez's body a breath thereafter. The president had wept aloud. His silk sash slipped over El's shoulders, smelling of the sweat and gun powder lingering in the diesel exhaust of escape. Fideo's hands were hot and dry and they crushed El's fingers in the acrid tequila flavor of his grief. And the old man from the FBI, Ramirez or Rodriguez, he laughed and laughed and his laughter was brown and smelled like dust.

And Carolina melted into the black.

He hears the American call out to Paz, the waitress, and sees the American's voice, red and streaking wildly across that black like a sudden splash of blood. Haphazard. For the briefest of moments, El Mariachi sees a pair of hard, shrewd eyes glittering over a darkling smirk, the words "_puerco pibil_" written in charcoal across a tabletop in Culiácan.

He shakes his head.

The slap of Paz's footsteps on the floor is the angry color of plums.

The American always speaks too loudly. Like he's trying to throw apples across a gorge and cannot gauge the distance to the other side. His voice is sharp in the relative silence of the empty _cantina_. Familiar to the point of distress. The familiarity presses against El's throat like the barrel of a gun.

The American orders a bottle of whiskey and a half-serving of _valenciana_, a saffron-colored rice dish with bell peppers, raisins and pork. Paz snorts and her cheap, polyester apron whistles sharp and gray over the cloth of her shirt as she turns around to call the order to the cook. The cook grunts loudly in reply from inside the kitchen.

And for a while, nothing. She paces the length of the _cantina_ and then back again, restless as usual. Outside, a dog barks and a rust-loud, rust-red vehicle –a truck, most probably- drives past. Little else. Siesta hour is almost blank with silence.

Paz's footfalls detour and move closer to his corner. "_Oiga, señor mariachi_."

She comes closer in violet smears. She is always uncharacteristically respectful when she speaks to him.

"Could you play a song please? It's too quiet."

The usual request, delivered in the usual fashion, at the usual time. Presumably. Time is dead to him.

And the music creeps into his fingers before he could reply.


	5. Chapter 5

The uneasiness gets the better of him, and Sands squints at the mariachi in the corner. The waitress walks up to him, her back to Sands. The mariachi lifts his head to look at her.

Or not.

Recognition.

Sands feels himself drop the empty glass back onto the table. Feels the table vibrate against his foot with the impact.

El Mariachi has no _eyes_.

What the _fuck_.

And the fucker slouches over his guitar and his hair slides over his face, obscuring it again. It's too late though. Sands has seen. Well, more than anything El will ever see again, anyway. And that was funny. Ha ha. Pause for a moment of comedy.

The mariachi is still playing, but Sands can't hear. Can't hear it. And that's funny too.

He stares and realizes: he fucking _hates_ El Mariachi even more than he thought he already did. Hate like a solid clenching of every muscle in his body, contracting to a single point, right between the mariachi's eyebrows, right where Sands imagines himself shooting him.

El fucking Mariachi. Funny how people can fall through the cracks like that.

He realizes that he's laughing then. Bent over the overturned glass on the table and laughing, slow and sharp, and maybe it's a good thing he can't hear the hysteria in his own voice. Feeling and hearing are two entirely different things, and he knows that it's true, that it's all really just absolutely fucking funny. But in a distant way. Like there's another Sands, and he's floating five feet above it all, listening. Laughing. The fucker. He's felt like this ever since Culiacan and the Day of the Dead, the memory hovering, distended and drug-blurred over his mind like an empty sky.

And he's walking towards El, but he doesn't know why, and thinks that maybe he should be scared, but then again, maybe not.

Sands doesn't believe in fear.

Fear is bullshit. Stuff people tell other people so that those people won't complain.

He is completely surprised, though, when his fist connects with El's jaw. And he hears his shadow-Sands laugh softly, somewhere near a ceiling fan. Phantom sounds. El Mariachi falls. The drunk who had been slumped on the bar makes a running jump. Tackles Sands to the floor. His eyes are bloodshot and black; almost all pupil. His hands are hot around Sands's throat, and he's screaming something at him, but Sands is too surprised to think about what words the drunk's mouth is forming. Doesn't think he quite cares that said drunk is most probably crushing his windpipe.

He sees the mariachi surge forward in slow motion. Sees an extreme close-up of the cut Sands had made on the mariachi's lower lip. El pushes the drunk aside. His bleeding mouth forms the round syllables _no no no_, and the drunk doesn't resist. He stares at Sands, who has only just begun to realize that it is possible for him to inhale again.

_El Mariachi has no _eyes.

"What the fuck."

The drunk leans against the stained adobe wall, panting. His eyes are bloodshot and look tired beyond human reckoning. Sands props himself up on his elbows and swallows experimentally.

"I know you," the mariachi's mouth says.

"No," he feels himself say. "You don't know shit."

El Mariachi's hands are hot and dry against the skin of his face. "Maybe." El Mariachi pulls in close, right on top of him; his brows drawn together in a contemplative frown. "But I have met you before."

Sands realizes that he is breathing against El's mouth. He stares at the scar tissue puckering around the holes where El's eyes were supposed to be. "Maybe you have," He finds himself replying. Not pulling away from El's hands as they trace the angle of his cheekbone and skim inquisitively over his lips.

"Sands." The word fills the air. It seems to sum up… well… _everything_. The eyeless mariachi pulls back and smiles. White white teeth. "Still standing?"

Sands exhales. "Kinda."

And when El's fist knocks his head back and he feels his body slam against the floor again, he realizes that he is not at all surprised.


	6. Chapter 6

It is fresh, this rage. Alive and strange and frightening. He tried to resist it, but the rush that coursed through his body split-seconds before his fist made contact with Sands's face was beyond anything that he had felt in months. Perhaps even years. And yes, it was red. Like a careless streak of blood.

Behind him, he hears Fideo laugh. It is equal parts triumph and despair. The edges are oddly soft and tinged with pink. For a moment, he sees the hem of his daughter's favorite dress.

From the floor, the American moans. El Mariachi reaches down and feels for Sands's hand. He stands up and pulls Sands upright with him. It is not an apology. Sands wavers and chokes out an ugly approximation of a laugh when he falls against El's shoulder.

"That was a good one," the American mumbles into El's shirt, his hard hand digging into El's arm. "Beautiful."

"Get off me," El Mariachi growls.

Sands shows no sign of hearing him. He's laughing again, tugging at the cloth of El's shirt. "Long time no see." More laughter.

Fideo gets up and staggers back to the bar. The soles of his shoes scrape loudly against the floor. "You'll be fine," he mutters. El Mariachi hears him sit down and order bourbon. Expensive. Not Fideo's usual.

"You know what you are?" He feels the air rushing out of Sands's mouth as he speaks, hot and moist, against his neck. "Imperturbable. Impenetrable." He draws out each syllable, like he's afraid that he'll break something if he speaks too quickly. El tries to shrug him off, but Sands is stubborn. "Still standing, right?" He cackles. "Do you know how much I'm hating your guts right now?" Sands's fingers dig into the flesh of his arm and shoulder. El clenches his teeth. Physical pain smells like Carolina's perfume.

He imagines that visual cues would come to him in the form of music. The color gray would be a violin.

A hot, unexpected kiss: Sands surges up against him, plants his dry and angry mouth on El Mariachi's forehead like a benediction. He feels the scrape of Sands's teeth against his brow.

Enough.

El Mariachi grabs the front of Sands's shirt and slams him against the wall. He didn't bother gauging the distance, and he feels himself lose his balance and fall against Sands. They manage to hold their upright position, but El's elbows are digging into Sands's scapula, and he can hear the other man struggle to breathe. The sound is a strange, hopeless shade of gray.

From the bar, Fideo laughs and laughs.


	7. Chapter 7

Both of them end up carrying Fideo back to El's cockroach-ridden garret on Calle San Pedro, six blocks away: Fideo is too drunk to stand, El Mariachi is too busy carrying Fideo to try gauging the distance and direction to the apartment by feel, and Sands is just bored enough to volunteer his services.

It's not like he has anything to do anyway.

Or so he tells himself.

It is on the fourth floor, and it smells like dust and old vomit. He looks at the ceiling, where an impromptu skylight –the kind made from a careless shotgun blast- brings the sun slanting in. Illuminates patches of termite-eaten floor.

"I must say El, I love what you girls did with the place."

He doesn't look at them for any reply. There is a chair in the corner, and two cots beside the naked, half-open window. Everything is mercilessly neat, but worn down to the barest thread.

Sands shrugs off his part of Fideo's weight, goes for the chair, and watches El Mariachi struggle to keep Fideo upright and navigate the cramped space at the same time. Fideo's mouth is moving. He is looking directly at Sands. Sands doesn't bother to try to read what he is saying. Reading lips takes effort, and it isn't worth the ravings of a drunken mariachi.

Despite himself, Sands recognizes the word "inevitable" twisting itself from the other man's lips.

El manages to get Fideo to a bed and prop him against a wall. They make a lovely couple, really. Sands feels himself laugh, and wonders why it doesn't quite reach his chest. Only his shoulders heaving and his mouth moving and the air rushing out of his lungs.

El Mariachi turns to the sound of Sands's voice, and his lower lip is still caked with blood. "_Agua,_" his mouth says.

"Get it yourself, Stevie Wonder."

El pushes Fideo upright as the other man begins to slip to the side.

"Busy." His fingers skitter over Fideo's face and neck. He begins to undo the other man's jacket. It is worn and brown, and buttoned up to the last button at the neck. It strikes Sands that the crazy drunk's attire might perhaps be a little inappropriate for the climate. Fideo fights El feebly, batting at El's hands with the same ineffectual amusement with which he had resisted both Sands's and El's attentions as they dragged him away from the cantina and into the orange heat of the mid-afternoon sun. "There's a fridge in the corner behind the door. The glasses are beside the sink next to the fridge." El Mariachi has his face turned to the ceiling now. He's concentrating on keeping Fideo under control.

"I see that. I'm not the blind one, you know."

"Water. _Ahora_."

Sands sighs and stands up.

Through the hole in the ceiling, the sky is monochrome; a mix of ochre and reddish gray. The glass is cold in his hand.

He wonders why he bothers at all.


	8. Chapter 8

When he wakes up, it is dark, and he wonders where he is. Everything stinks of blood and mold. Through the ragged hole in the ceiling, the sky is dusty purple-black. There is a dry taste in his mouth. The left side of his face is throbbing, and the inside of his head is in five different kinds of agony. And he remembers that the mariachi had hit him. Both mariachis, the fuckers. First it was El, earlier that day in the cantina, and then it was Fideo, not quite so drunk after all. He had pistol-whipped Sands with his own gun when Sands went over to give the bastard water. He laughed as he grabbed Sands's belt and reached into his pants to take it out.

The Agency forced him to surrender all of his weapons upon retirement. They don't know that he had held on to one. Just for old time's sake, of course.

And Fideo found it.

_Fuck_ him. That psychotic, shitsucker bastard.

He groans and brings his hand up to rub his temples, but meets resistance. He realizes that he is handcuffed to an unconscious El. And the chain is wound around the grilles on one of the beds. Neither of them can move.

Fucking _fuck_ him.

There is a bruise blooming starkly on El Mariachi's right temple, most probably where his two-faced sidekick clocked him. The cut on his lower lip that Sands had given him has scabbed over. His head is on Sands's lap. His left arm is spread wide, and the hand lies loosely curled next to Sands's, joined together by a cheap iron chain. His chest rises and falls in a steady rhythm. El Mariachi in repose. It's a little difficult to tell if he's asleep though, considering the fact that not having eyes to open or close can make differentiating wakefulness from sleep a bit more of a challenge.

"El," he feels himself say. He knows that he is making a sound; the vibration of air in his lungs travels up and loosens the grit in his throat. There is something rough and bitter in the back of his mouth, and he wants to spit. "El Mariachi. Wake up, you assweed." He jiggles a leg to jar El's head. El Mariachi stirs. He opens his mouth, and Sands supposes that he is releasing an I-just-woke-up-and-it-feels-like-I-spent-the-night-on-the-New-York-City-subway-tracks kind of groan. Attempts to pull himself upright. The chain linking them together jerks Sands's hand. His knuckles bump against the grille. El Mariachi frowns and struggles into a sitting position. His other hand gropes at the offending handcuffs. For a moment, their fingers meet. El Mariachi frowns harder and strains against the cuffs. The metal of the bed grille bites into the back of Sands's hand. The floor is hard against the bones of Sands's ass.

"This is your boyfriend's doing, you know that."

El Mariachi's mouth forms elaborate curses in both Spanish and English.

Sands laughs.

"Fideo is not my boyfriend." El's teeth are nicotine-stained and sharp. A long pause, disrupted only by Sands's knuckles slamming against the grilles as El worries at the chain. There are probably clanking sounds. "What do you want?"

"What does any guy chained to another guy want?" He feels a bead of sweat make its way down his chest. Trust it to still be uncomfortably hot at night in Mexico. "To get _un_-chained, of course."

El Mariachi scowls. His right hand digs nimbly into his pockets. He jolts and stops. It is interesting how different the play of emotions on a person's face looks like when he doesn't have eyes. El Mariachi's clenched jaw slackens, and his guard drops for all of half a second. Sands is surprise at how tired El Mariachi looks. Then he tightens again, and his eyebrows draw together. The scar tissue over his eye sockets pull ever so slightly. He cocks his head in the direction of a door Sands has not noticed until then. Bathroom? "Did you hear that?" El's mouth forms the words, his posture and facial expression form the question. Except it's less a question than it is a demand.

The world on mute, according to Sheldon Jeffrey Sands.

"Didn't hear a fucking thing, Cupcake."

El Mariachi does not reply. His mouth is half open and he is listening again. His right hand goes back to rooting through his pockets.

"It was a gunshot." El pulls his hand out of his back pocket and throws aside a twenty peso bill. He probably mistook it for scrap paper. Sands makes a mental note to pick it up off the floor once they get free.

"That's nice." Sands is annoyed.

Sands reaches for his shoe with his left hand and fiddles a bit with the false heel, and lo and behold, a miniature lock-pick set. He fumbles while trying to pick the handcuff lock. He hasn't needed to use his lock-picking skills in a while, who could blame him for being a little out of practice?

El stiffens and turns in the direction of what would most probably be the metallic sounds of Sands's disengagement efforts. "What are you doing?"

"What does it look like I'm doing? I'm picking the lock."

El Mariachi looks even more irritated than he already is. "I didn't see that."

Sands snorts. "Just like I didn't hear your alleged gunshot. So we're even."

"It was a loud gunshot."

"And you look like shit."

"So I've heard."

Sands smiles through clenched teeth and controls the urge to sink an ice pick through El Mariachi's skull. Concentrating on undoing a simple handcuff lock is harder than it looks when you're pissed off.

"Where've you been these past few months, Legend-boy? The not-having-eyes thing cramping your style? What, no more heroics just because you can't see what you're doing anymore?"

And El Mariachi hits him again. He feels the skin on his inner cheek break as El's fist makes contact with his face. Blood still tastes like blood, no matter how many times you get punched in the face.

For someone who has no eyes, El Mariachi's aim is impeccable this time.

"Ow, Jesus_fucker_!"

And miraculously, Sands finds that elusive cog, and the gears fall free. Briefly, he regrets no longer being able to hear everything click into place. And then Sheldon Jeffrey Sands drops his equipment and lunges for El Mariachi's throat.


	9. Chapter 9

He finds a body in the bathroom and realizes that he would not be in the least bit surprised if it was Fideo's.

He and Sands had fought like angry ten-year-olds, biting and pulling and slapping haphazardly, years of combat experience and expertise left in the dust of their frustration. It was a brilliant mess of greens and yellows and blues, interjected by the careless red streaks of Sands's oaths.

Eventually, they came to a stalemate when he pressed one of Sands's lock picks against his head and threatened to take out an eye, and Sands had another one digging into the side of El's head, centimeters away from his left ear. The irony of the situation was not at all lost to him.

He had gone to the bathroom to wash away the blood and spit. He tripped over a foot when he stepped in.

Behind him, Sands's footsteps were heavy, but for once, he did not speak. There was only the sound of their breathing and the cockroaches scurrying in the walls. Everything was angles and gray.

Now, Sands is laughing again. El Mariachi is beginning to hate the sound. It is ugly and red and swirled with brown and black.

"Look El, it's your sidekick," he gasps between giggles and loud, rasping breaths.

El exhales.

No, he is not surprised at all.

He wonders why his chest suddenly feels tight.

Sands slumps against the opened bathroom door. His breath comes out in pops and gasps; the sound of his mirth is half sob.

El bends down and gropes for Fideo's pulse. After all, who knows?

The body is already cold. The blood on the floor is slick. He discovers that Fideo had died with his eyes open. For a moment, the familiar stink of shit, blood, and gunpowder almost overpowers him.

Sands's laughter peters off into silence, and El hears him stand up. He releases a half-groan as he bends down to pick something up off the floor. The sound of cloth and skin and metal: a study in browns and blues.

El Mariachi feels the muzzle of Fideo's gun against his cheek.

"This is what he used, I'm presuming." His voice has taken on a duller hue, like blood left to dry.

El's hand hovers over Fideo's face, and he realizes that he is touching the edges of an entry wound in the side of Fideo's head.

He takes the gun and sighs. By feel, he recognizes that it is Fideo's old gun. His favorite. The one he called Dolores. El did not ask why. He is not one to pry.

He realizes that he has forgotten his guitar in the cantina again. He doesn't know why it occurs to him only now. It is an ordinary guitar; nothing but wood and string and vibration. He hopes Paz will take care of it until he goes back for it.

The gun in his hands is empty, but slightly warm. Everything is still. Indeed, everything is black and black and black. He imagines that he can hear the stars.

El Mariachi is suddenly very much aware that he cannot see.

Sands coughs in the blankness, and it is harsh and yellow and welcome.

"Fuckmook took my gun. Don't know where he put it."

A sigh and the sound of shoes scuffing tile. Impact. El feels the corpse shift. "What do you propose we do with the body?" Sands's voice is small and distant, like a scream from the opposite side of a long tunnel.

For a moment, the blackness is absolute.

"I don't know."

El Mariachi wonders why Sands is still here.

-End-

A/n: I may or may not be adding to this particular story. I get the feeling that I left a lot of loose narrative ends hanging, but for me, the story feels _finished_. For now. :3


End file.
